At 1:08 PM +0000 2/4/99, Maurice A. O'Sullivan wrote:
>At 21:28 03/02/99 -0500, you wrote:
> Does anyone have any recommendations
>>re: what good classical Greek grammatical tools/learning aids (both
>>accidence and syntax) I should look at? Is there anything out there
>>that is designed for those who have been exposed to koine but not
>>classical Greek?
>>
>David:
>My recommendation -- which will not meet your second requirement above --
>is to use the Joint Association of Classical Teachers [ Cambridge, England
>] "Reading Greek"
>
>This comes in two paperback volumes:
>Reading Greek: which is a collection of texts, very simplified to begin
>with, getting nearer to the originals as you progress
>and
>Reading Greek : Grammar, Vocabulary and Exercises
As one who (although offering a tutorial to students who've had Attic but
want to read Biblical Greek) regularly teaches Classical Attic Greek in a
secular university using the JACT texts for several years now, I heartily
endorse what Maurice says about it. Its great advantages are: (1) it is
solidly grounded in the principle of reading massive amounts of text
illustrating the new items of grammar in sequence; (2) it quickly gets into
real literary Attic Greek texts, beginning with Aristophanes and Plato,
continuing through speeches from the corpus of Demosthenes, Herodotus, more
Plato, and finally a fair portion of Book 6 of Homer's Odyssey. Should you
go this route, you might well need to ask some questions as you go along: I
think you'll find people on this list open to such questions, and you may
certainly address them to me off-list (although I won't guarantee being
able to answer just any and every question).
Let me add that it's not easy going backwards from Koiné to Classical
Greek, but I did it with effort myself 45 years ago--read gospel of Mark in
a horrible little textbook by Rife the first year, did Homer's Iliad in the
wonderful edition with commentary by Benner (still in print) the second
year, plunged into Aristotle and Sophocles the third year. I would
definitely recommend going the other way around to anyone who has the
choice. Here we don't offer Biblical Greek EXCEPT as a tutorial to people
who have done at least one year of Classical Attic.
>The JACT have their own web-site at:
>http://www.source.co.uk/users/jprogs/jact/
I'm grateful to Maurice for this URL for JACT. Let me add another for some
Macintosh HyperCard stacks that Matt Neuburg has written (freeware!) to
accompany the JACT Reading Greek Course:
http://www.tidbits.com/matt/default2.html#agthings
There are other possibilities, of course; but this is one of the best texts
for one who DOES already have a background in Biblical Greek precisely
because its focus is on acquisition of ability to read--not isolated
sentences, but narrative and dialogue in connected prose of authors that
are worth reading in their own right.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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